


Numb to You(r Pain)

by ForMyBabies (BooksandKpop)



Category: SF9 (Band)
Genre: Angst?, It's a soulmate au, M/M, Psychic!Chani, Shapeshifer!Juho, Stressed!Hwiyoung, Witch!Rowoon, except the soulmates don't end up together, how about that huh
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-01
Updated: 2020-04-01
Packaged: 2021-02-28 22:53:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,800
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23434957
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BooksandKpop/pseuds/ForMyBabies
Summary: “You have a soulmate.” Chani was staring at him with a deadpan expression. He didn’t sound surprised by anything Hwiyoung had said and it also didn’t seem like he was teasing him. Huh.“Soulmate? You sure?”Hwiyoung gets flashes of his soulmate's life through the pain they cause themselves. He blocks it out. Life goes on.
Relationships: Baek Juho | Zuho/Kim Youngkyun | Hwiyoung, Kang Chanhee | Chani/Kim Seokwoo | Rowoon
Comments: 6
Kudos: 28





	Numb to You(r Pain)

Hwiyoung didn’t have a lot of magical energy. Yes, it was slightly above the average ‘don’t know you have it unless someone shows you’ human level, but it was weak and flaky. Like an unsteady dripping tap his best friend had called it. Chani was clairvoyant and had actual connections to the magic realm. Not that Hwiyoung was jealous or anything.

So no, Hwiyoung couldn’t tell you what colour you’re thinking of or what the winning lottery numbers will be for next week. He also couldn’t give you a blessing or a curse or do anything remotely cool. At most, he could sense when other people were doing magic around him and knew not to walk into warded doors. Which was better than nothing, he supposed. 

What he was never expecting was to wake up one day with a start feeling like someone had just poured ice-cold water into his lap. Hwiyoung was dry, completely, but he couldn’t shake how real it had felt. He spent the better part of the morning checking every inch of his bedroom for illusion runes that may have been planted as a joke by one of his friends. There were none. He decided not to tell anyone about it and moved on with his life.

Only, strange things like that kept happening. Like when he was out walking in the park with Chani one evening after class and had to stop in place when it felt like someone had smacked him over the back of the head with a book. A heavy one at that - chemistry maybe? Why would he know that? Chani looked at him with a very exasperated look on his face and Hwiyoung just rolled his eyes. It was fine. 

Until it wasn’t fine and he was walking around with a phantom black eye or a twinge in his ankle that definitely wasn’t his fault. Or he started feeling nauseous and sick to his stomach like he had eaten a triple cheese pizza with cheese-stuffed crust and cheesy fries washed down with a large strawberry milkshake. Why does he know exactly how much lactose it took to make him feel that ill? 

It wasn’t until he started quoting lyrics from songs he had never even listened to that he decided he needed help. And who better to help him figure out this weird shit than his magical best friend. Ok maybe not properly magical, but Chani was good with things that had to do with his mind, and was apparently being courted by a witch. So yeah, he told him all the weird things that had happened over the last two months that he could remember as Chani sat in silence and sipped his smoothie. And when Hwiyoung finally finished his story with the most recent event of feeling like a cat scratched the inside of his arm while he was trying to cook eggs for lunch, he let out a loud sigh. It was good to get it off his chest. 

“You have a soulmate.” Chani was staring at him with a deadpan expression. He didn’t sound surprised by anything Hwiyoung had said and it also didn’t seem like he was teasing him. Huh.

“Soulmate? You sure?” Yeah, Hwiyoung knew soulmates existed. They were rare though, and it was nothing like movies made it out to be where you could just follow the tug in your chest and when you first saw them colour bloomed into your life and when you touched you gained an extra sense. That was all bullshit. But soulmates were real. They were just people who had some sort of supernatural connection. 

“Seems like you get flashes of their life, mostly induced by pain apparently.” His best friend laughed as Hwiyoung groaned and let his head drop against the table with a thump. Maybe his soulmate would feel that. He kind of hoped they would. But Chani just patted his hair in consolation as if he knew that wasn’t the case. Knowing Hwiyoung’s luck, his soulmate probably didn’t even know he existed. 

“Maybe now you’ll actually take me up on my offer to teach you how to mentally shield.” There it was, the dry sarcasm that made him and Chani fit so well together. Hwiyoung didn’t raise his head but did raise one of his middle fingers instead. That just made him laugh even harder and Hwiyoung groaned. Chani was a shit teacher. He got a flick to the back of his head. 

“Hey!” Another flick.

“If you knew how to block me out of your thoughts you could bitch about me all you want.” Their conversation dissolved into childish squabbling. Chani could air all of Hwiyoung’s most embarrassing secrets if he wanted to. But they had known each other since they were children and Hwiyoung had plenty of mortifying blackmail material on his best friend too. Another reason why they were so good together; they both had too much to lose if their friendship went south. It was a good deal. 

Knowing that the random pains and aches Hwiyoung was experiencing were caused by his soulmate did help a little. It also meant that when he had to lie down in the middle of the campus quad because it felt like he had been shot in the leg he had someone to curse at in his head. Loudly. Just to piss off Chani, who could still very clearly hear his thoughts. Hwiyoung was bad with the mind-stuff alright?

“Alright, we’re getting you a talisman or something I’m fed up with this.” He had dropped the bowl of popcorn he had made for their weekly bad movie night perfectly onto the thick carpet rug in the middle of the living room floor because it felt like someone had placed a taser between his shoulder blades. It was a spark spell gone awry, and he grumbled angrily about getting that flash of information as Chani helped him rub the feeling back into his fingers. At least his best friend was going to help him doing something about it now. Other than spending three hours of a lesson poking around in his head trying to teach him how to do mental blocking. 

The witch courting Chani was tall and handsome and very, very sweet. If Hwiyoung hadn’t known any better he might have suspected a love charm or memory manipulation was involved. But he knew Chani, and this witch was genuinely just head-over-heels. He also didn’t have a mental filter, apparently. Or at least that’s what Hwiyoung assumed was the reason behind the hideous pink flush on the psychic’s face when Rowoon was just watching him with a dopey grin. 

He made a talisman for Hwiyoung to protect him from the pain of his soulmate connection. It was still very likely that he would be able to sense the stupid shit that was happening to his soulmate when it triggered their connection, but at least he would stop feeling every single time this person stubbed their toe on the coffee table in their living room because they couldn’t be bothered to turn on the lights when they went to get a glass of water at night. Little victories. Hwiyoung would take what he could get. 

And so Hwiyoung’s life went on. He went to class and studied in the library and did his assignments sprawled out on his bedroom floor because Rowoon was here more often than not now by way of ‘payment’ for Hwiyoung’s talisman. He didn’t have to be able to read minds to know that Chani was perfectly content with this arrangement. There were no more random stabbings of pain through one of his limbs every time his soulmate did something stupid or pissed someone off - which had unfortunately seemed to be a very regular occurrence. Just how much of a clumsy asshole was his soulmate anyway? 

Hwiyoung did still get flashes of things when they went down. Like the enchanted paper aeroplane which flew directly into his soulmates eye. Or the not-a-dog-but-maybe-still-canine creature pinning his soulmate bodily to the floor by his chest. But at least Hwiyoung didn’t have to deal with an irritated eye or chest pains anymore. He still felt a little guilty about the trouble his soulmate somehow kept getting themself into, but since it happened so often there must be something they had done to deserve it. 

“Maybe they pissed off a luck spirit. Wouldn’t be the first time.” Rowoon’s familiar was a cat. The cat was also a person. Hwiyoung wasn’t entirely sure how that worked. He had been delighted when Rowoon asked him to keep his familiar company while he and Chani went on a date. He was less delighted when the cute, fluffy black cat he had cradled into his lap had shifted into a very naked human man with fluffy black hair instead. He did promise not to tell Chani about the high-pitched shriek Hwiyoung had let out though, so that was something. 

Juho was lying sideways on his bed with his head in his hands watching Hwiyoung struggle with his history essay. It felt more like he was keeping Hwiyoung company than the other way around, but it was still nice. The cat (?) familiar had easily indulged his rant about his stupid soulmate and all the increasingly ridiculous shit they were getting themselves into that Hwiyoung was very relieved he didn’t have to deal with the physical fallout from. Now he was just sitting there, large green eyes following Hwiyoung’s hands as he typed and his legs kicking in the air behind him. 

“Do you think they ever get flashes of me?” He had never felt like asking Chani about it after the first day, and Rowoon was never around without his best friend. No one else he was any way close to had any sort of magical insight, and trying to explain the idea of soulmates to Taeyang or Minhyuk was not high on his priority list. It wasn’t on the list at all, honestly. But Juho was here, alone, and was very much magical - probably. He was a shapeshifter of some form so that had to mean magic. And surely he wouldn’t be a witches familiar otherwise, right? 

“Maybe. But you don’t seem to get injured badly very often and you’re not around a lot of magic either. So maybe not.” Hwiyoung just sighed heavily and rubbed his eyes. He had been trying to put his essay conclusion together for an hour and had fewer words than when he started. Juho was curling his arms around his shoulders and nuzzling his cheek against Hwiyoung’s hair before the student had even realised he had moved. Cats, they were stealthy. But the affection was pleasant and so he let his eyes fall shut and allowed himself to be cuddled for a little while. Juho was warm, and the rumbling in his chest felt nice against Hwiyoung’s tense back. 

He was out for coffee with Chani, Rowoon and human-Juho when he got the strongest flash of feeling from his soulmate than ever before. Except there was no actual feeling associated with it, just a numb recognition of what had happened. His expression must have been something stressed because Juho had taken one of his hands and was nuzzling it against his face. He did that as a cat too, it helped to calm Hwiyoung down when he was studying. Juho had been spending a lot of time in his dorm room lately. Chani had refused to comment on it. 

“You look like you’ve had a vision of something. Are you alright?” Always the considerate one, Rowoon was watching him with concern in his eyes. The witch had been spending a lot of time in his shared apartment with Chani for the last few weeks. He had taken on a very parental role over the pair of them, which Hwiyoung didn’t exactly find uncomfortable but considering the taller male was courting his best friend it did seem a little strange. Again, he didn’t comment. 

“My soulmate is out there, somewhere, pushing a pull door. I just know it.” Usually, the details of what had caused the pain came after the fact, not before it. But in his head, Hwiyoung replayed the flash of imagery over and over again like a vine on repeat. A hanging basket with a strange assortment of flowers, a glass door with a silver handle and a sign that clearly read ‘Pull’. Then a hand reaching out and pushing against it, and the dull thump of his soulmate walking face-first into the door. That was probably going to bruise. 

Life kept moving on. Chani officially accepted Rowoon’s courtship after another six months of their weird in-between. Hwiyoung found out that Juho wasn’t actually Rowoon’s familiar, he was an unlicenced shapeshifter that Rowoon was protecting while he got it sorted. It did get sorted, and then Juho asked him to be his boyfriend like a normal person. He said yes, because they had basically been dating for the last few months anyway. 

Hwiyoung continued to get flashes of his soulmates series of unfortunate events. Juho had convinced him to keep a diary. There were definitely things he had forgotten from the beginning when this all started, but the more recent stuff he kept well documented. Like the time his soulmate had decided it would be a good idea to go sky diving with a half-fae. The fae had wings, his soulmate did not. Thankfully they didn’t break too many bones but even with his talisman, Hwiyoung felt stiff for weeks. 

There were smaller things too, not pain-related things. Hwiyoung kept them in a different diary, away from everyone else. Juho had taught him how to do a mental shield, he was a much better teacher than Chani. Hwiyoung had thought that very loudly right at his best friend and he didn’t seem to hear it. That had made for a very interesting and cathartic night. Until he got drunk, but that didn’t count.

Sometimes Hwiyoung woke up in the middle of the night with a heaviness in his chest and he felt his soulmate crying. The why was never really clear, but it made it hard for Hwiyoung to get back to sleep until his soulmate had drifted off too. There were also flashes of things that made his soulmate extremely happy - like huge fluffy dogs running around in a park or a free cupcake with their coffee order on a bad morning. Hwiyoung kept track of all those things too, learning a little more about his soulmate with each vision. He probably should tell someone, tell Juho at least. But for the moment he wanted this to himself. He was connected to this person, he wanted to know about them. 

The way movies portray soulmates recognising one another when they meet for the first time is bullshit. Hwiyoung knows that much to be true. Because the first time he saw his soulmate there was no immediate spark of recognition, he didn’t feel like his life was complete and there was no music playing in the background. What he felt was the dull thump of what should be pain against his sternum as his soulmate walked into a streetlamp. He watched him walk into it. In another situation, he probably would have laughed, because who walks into a streetlamp when they’re actually watching where they’re going? Well, Hwiyoung’s soulmate, apparently. 

Juho turned back to him, confused as to why he had stopped in the middle of the sidewalk. It was cold out, and they were holding hands for warmth. But Hwiyoung’s eyes were on the man sitting on the curb on the other side of the road, clutching his chest and heaving laboured breathes. Hwiyoung noticed the numb ache in his ass too. His soulmate had thrown himself down onto the pavement pretty hard. Juho followed his gaze across the street to the man who wasn’t even wearing proper winter clothes. 

“Do you know him?” It was casual, conversational, curious. Hwiyoung nods his head, once, but doesn’t answer. He’s too busy watching his soulmate struggle to his feet, lean against the streetlamp he walked into, draw something in the air with his fingers, and then jolt upright and shake his shoulders like a dog does when it gets wet. The numb lack of pain fades from Hwiyoung’s chest and his soulmate continues walking down the street.

“Hwi, who is that?” This time it was questioning, Juho wanted an answer. Hwiyoung didn’t want to give him the right one. But he did, because he loved his boyfriend and they were getting married next week. He didn’t even know the name of the rapidly disappearing man on the other side of the street.

“That’s my soulmate.”

**Author's Note:**

> So uhhh thanks for springing this on me Molly! It started as a happy fic, I promise! But then...I don't know what happened. I'm sorry?
> 
> For the record, Dawon is Hwiyoung's soulmate. And yes, he does feel Hwiyoung's pain too.


End file.
